User experience Hanny

Hanny has already for 20 years Multiple Sclerosis. Despite her MS she cycled pieces with her BerkelBike  (hybrid between a tricycle and a recumbent) along 5 different rivers in the Dordogne in the last week of September. Below you can find her report (translated from Dutch) with some pictures. You can contact her by e-mail.

Masses 

Céou

My cycling trip in France

For weeks in advance, the seven-day tour in the Dordogne was booked. With my new tricycle, the BerkelBike, we were able to make trips out of three different locations.

From previous bike tours the landscape was known, but with the BerkelBike comes an exercise plan and I had the recumbent just for two weeks. The plan pointed out that I was allowed to cycle three times 20 minutes in the third week. Combined with the fourth week, it would be 5 times 20 minutes. It meant that I had to adjust my plans: because of the muscles and joints, I noticed that indeed it is better to gradually build.

And so it became five days cycling for 20 mintues along the Dordogne, Célé, Lot, Masses and Céou. Of course, sometimes a little longer than 20 minutes, because it went very well with this great recumbent! For as it is, in such beautiful surroundings you lose track of time.

So besides cycling there was plenty of time for sightseeing excursions: visits to Martel (the city with the 7 towers, built by Karel Martel, when he managed to stop the Saracens at Poitiers), Figeac (the birthplace of Jean-François Champollion, who decipher the stone of Rosettea and subsequently the hieroglyphs) and Cazals near to Les Arques, where Ossip Zadkine lived and worked and where his artworks can be admired in a museum and in a 12th century church.

The BerkelBike and also my little tricycle for in the towns and museums, our luggage and two lawn chairs, it all just fitted in the car. My husband did the loading and unloading job and his own bike was put on the bicycle carrier at the back of the car. Together we had a terrific practice week.